Chapter 39 - Let It Out

  After a few beats, Maggie set her sister down and walked toward me, tears pouring down her cheeks. She didn’t stop until she’d wrapped me in a hug. Not sure what to do, I put an arm gently around her, too.

  She backed away after a brief embrace, still crying happy tears. “You did it. I don’t know how you saved her, but you did. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “He did it ‘cause he’s a superhero,” Emmy called out, speaking like it was the most obvious thing in the world and the grownups were dumb for not picking up on that right away.

  “I’m just someone trying to do the right thing as best I can,” I replied.

  “Who flies around and saves people from monsters,” Maggie pointed out. “I’m not so sure she’s wrong.”

  I chuckled at the absurdity of that, but then again, everything about my life since the Event hit had been absurd, so why not this, too? Then I shook myself to clear those thoughts away. There was too much still too much to do for me to be daydreaming. The invasion was ongoing. People were in danger. If I didn’t do something, a lot of people were going to die.

  “I need to go,” I said.

  “To save more people,” Maggie pointed out.

  I just nodded. What else was there to say? “You two going to be okay?”

  “We will. I have our bag of supplies. We’ll head toward Cambridge. I hear there’s people organizing over at Harvard. I think we’ll aim for that. Will we see you again?”

  “Probably. Harvard sounds like a good rally point. But first, I need to stop an army from invading Boston, as crazy as that sounds.”

  “If anyone alive can do it,” Maggie said. “I think you can.”

  The little gesture of faith meant a lot. She was pretty much a stranger, but she believed. I hoped she was right.

  “See you soon, then,” I said. Then I focused my Will on the Flight spell and shot skyward again.

  Flight still had the same rush it had the first time I did it. I hoped that would linger, that sense of wonder, because I was really enjoying this part of my new magical powers. I soared up to an elevation high enough to be above the skyscrapers, so I figured I was maybe four or five hundred feet up. It was enough to give me an excellent eagle-eye view of the city and the battleground it had become.

  The lines of battle shifted dramatically while I’d been busy. The lobster forces had pressed in all up and down the east coast of the city, pushing up on the police lines from the southeast along Pearl, Oliver, and State Streets. That allowed them to flank the human defenses, forcing them to fall back. It looked to me like they’d tried to hold the area around City Hall at first—there were bodies and other signs of fighting all across the open plaza behind the building, and along the roads around it. But the battle line was focused mostly on Cambridge Street on the humans’ east flank and to a smaller degree upper Tremont Street on the southeast. The fighting in both areas was hot, but as I landed on top of City Hall, I was more worried about the battle taking place at Tremont.

  The lobsters hadn’t brought up many troops on that side, focusing most on the Cambridge Street battle. But maybe that was intentional, because they had a convoy of the crab tanks coming up Milk Street as I watched. With as few of the police as they had defending that line, the crabs would rip them to shreds. Then they’d slice north and sandwich the rest of the humans between two enemies. Caught in the middle, I had a feeling they wouldn’t last long.

  Of course, they weren’t expecting me.

  I jumped off the side of the building, hurtling toward the ground. For a long moment I just let myself drop, but then I activated flight when I was about fifty feet from the pavement and rocketed forward, sailing between buildings. I caught up with them just before they made the transition to School Street. Another couple hundred meters and they’d be all over the already beleaguered human defenders.

  I did a fly-by first at height. I don’t think the lobster forced spotted me. They were focused on the ground, and I was a brief overhead blip.

  There were four of the massive crabs, and two score lobsters along with them. That was a substantial strike force. The lobster troops were all tier one and two, but the crabs were much stronger. Two of them were tier four, the others tier five.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  This wasn’t going to be an easy fight. I landed on a nearby roof, both to rest and recover mana a moment, and to think about my options.

  I only had one chance to make a first impression. They had no idea I was coming and no clue what I was capable of, which was a massive advantage. As soon as I showed myself, that edge would vanish. All their attention would be on me, at that point.

  The other big edge I had was that I could fly and they couldn’t. The lobsters had some ranged attacks. I’d seen them firing Ice Blasts and Lightning Bolts against the police, so they could hit me while I was in the air, but at their low tiers those attacks had to be severely limited by mana.

  I needed to even the odds some. Fortunately, Boston was pretty much always under construction, which made finding a bunch of two-meter lengths of iron rebar incredibly easy. There was a massive pile of the stuff at a half-built high-rise that I figured was probably never getting completed now anyway. I hefted a stack of the things onto my shoulders and took off again, flying back to the top of the Omni Hotel to drop most of them off.

  Snagging one in my right hand and three more in my left, I shot downward toward the approaching enemies. This time, the lobsters saw me coming, but they weren’t going to have time to do anything about it before I attacked. I tossed the first rebar at the lead crab, aiming for the relatively unarmored spot near the front.

  I missed. The rebar struck its shell hard enough to crack it, but it didn’t penetrate.

  An Ice Blast streaked past my shoulder. I flew back and forth, making myself a tougher target, and tossed the second rebar. This one missed, too—I needed to get better at throwing these things! But thankfully I was throwing with enough force that when the rebar hit the already-cracked shell, it blew right through, stabbing deep into the crab. It let out a keening series of clicks and stopped in its tracks. Its legs were still moving, but it wasn’t going anywhere.

  More of the lobsters rushed in to defend it. A couple of them had Ice Blast powers, because two more two-foot ice javelins flew my way. I dodged the first. The second was perfectly aimed and struck my chest with bruising force. I shook it off. My Regeneration power was already going to work healing the damage.

  I returned fire, tossing the two remaining chunks of rebar at the spellcasting lobsters. I hit one, killing it. The other dove back behind the wounded crab and avoided my strike.

  Out of ammunition, I flew back to my rooftop to grab some more. I snagged four more rods and stepped to the edge of the roof, peering down to see how they were reacting. The lobsters were all alarmed now. Several had rushed in to the injured crab. It looked like they were trying to help it out. Maybe they had magic capable of healing its wounds? About a quarter of their troops were staying with the wounded crab while the rest advanced, the other crabs working their slow way around their wounded comrade.

  Time to put a stop to that.

  I jumped from the roof again, catching myself with Flight just a handful of meters above the ground. One of the crabs was only fifteen feet away. At that range, I figured I was in good shape for hitting the thing and threw.

  The rebar stabbed into the crab’s front near the mouth, punching through the relatively light armor there. It clacked its claws angrily and staggered sideways. I followed up with a second shot that drove home next to the first, and that seemed to be enough. The crab just collapsed to the ground.

  With one crab dead and another too badly wounded to move, the street was effectively blocked. From where I hovered over the street I saw the next crab working to climb over the dead one, so I wasn’t out of the woods yet, but it was an improvement.

  There were a dozen lobsters standing on this side of the wall of crabs, and I still had two chunks of rebar left. I rushed forward at full speed, driving one into the wounded crab like a lance. It shuddered and died.

  From there, I dropped to the ground holding the last iron rod like a staff. Lobsters rushed me from all directions, spears in their smaller hands while their big claws clacked together. They looked furious. That discipline I’d seen earlier was nowhere to be seen as they came at me from all sides.

  That wasn’t their best move.

  I swung the rebar in an arc, pivoting on my heels as I swept it around in a full circle. All my tier six plus Strength went into that swing, and the bar moved so fast it was a blur. Each enemy it struck shattered, their shells coming apart like they’d been hit with explosives. Dead and dying lobsters went flying in all directions.

  Half of them were gone. The other half were standing back a bit. All of them looked like they wished they were anywhere else.

  “Come on, then!” I shouted. “Come at me!”

  I tossed aside the length of rebar, now bent into a hopeless, twisted piece of junk, and sprang forward toward the nearest one. My punch sent him sailing backward to smash into the building behind him. He didn’t get up again.

  Like it was a signal, the others rushed me. They were joined by a swarm of their fellows clambering over the dead crabs. Both of the still-living crabs were making their way over their dead brethren, too. I was about to be in the middle of a ‘target rich environment.’

  And I just didn’t care.

  Fury filled me, a deep anger I hadn’t even known I still harbored. All the rage I’d felt as I watched Amanda die in front of me came roaring back like it had just happened moments ago. The helpless feeling, the punch in my gut as I’d seen the blade sink into her chest, it filled me back up.

  I’d been bottling that up because I had to. There hadn’t been any choice. First, I had the kids to look after. Then Amanda’s body to recover, and the other dead. Then saving Alex. After that, it was fighting ants, fighting lobster-monsters, saving Emmy from the rocs… It had all happened so fast I simply hadn’t had time to process anything.

  It was all still there, built up, waiting for release, and it rolled over me like a tidal wave, threatening to wash me away with the force of it all. I couldn’t keep it in, not any longer. There was too much hurt. So much loss. All the pain in the world rushed up through me. But for once, I had a target for it, so I did the only thing that made sense to me.

  I let it out.